Philosophical Quote of the Day

"If the sense of the absurd is a way of perceiving our true situation (even though the situation is not absurd until the perception /occurs/), then what reason can we have to resent or escape it? Like the capacity for epistemological skepticism, it results from the ability to understand our human limitations. It need not be a matter for agony unless we make it so. Nor need it evoke a defiant contempt of fate that allows us to feel brave or proud. Such dramatics, even if carried on in private, betray a failure to appreciate the cosmic unimportance of the situation. If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that doesn't matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heriosm or despair."

Thomas Nagel, "The Absurd," from The Journal of Philosophy, 1971 (/*/= doubtful reading: I made a bad photocopy.)

I like the anology. Both skepticism and absurdity have to do with questioning oneself. (Though I don't think that either is the way to be.) I bet he's happy with how things have turned out.